Sociologist and economist Thorstein Veblen came up with the term “conspicuous consumption” to explain how people will spend exorbitant amounts of money on goods and services that signal their status (think: luxury goods). In economics, people have traditionally wanted to measure things priced against their usefulness, but Veblen observed that sometimes we do stuff just … Continue reading Conspicuous Consumption And How It Applies To Our Jobs
Tag: evolutionary biology
Legacy Leverage
What’s it called when something old still exerts influence even when it’s not that good anymore? Ben Thompson called it “legacy leverage.” He was talking about Microsoft and Windows, but its lots of other places too once we start looking for it. Anywhere we see customer lock-in based on old rules, old systems, and old … Continue reading Legacy Leverage
3 Simple Methods For Improving Decision Making
Our brains don’t always work for us. That’s not to say that they work against us, but it helps to remember that the default setting is to serve a more primitive master. The human wet-ware between our ears evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, and with it so did every persuasion trick in the … Continue reading 3 Simple Methods For Improving Decision Making
Saturday Catch-Up: Network Effects
W. Brian Arthur was recently on the a16z podcast talking technology and economics. If you're not familiar with him or his work, hearing him talk to Sonal Chokshi and Mark Andreesen isn't exactly a bad place to start. Arthur explains for any technology to work, you'll need both the principles and the components. Innovators are … Continue reading Saturday Catch-Up: Network Effects
Get Good, Stay Good, Get Better, Become Great
Finding positive synergies is all about getting good. These are proverbially the “good problems” to have. After a while though, all things evolve. To stay good, we need to seek the stressors that enable evolution. We have to ask, “what’s next?”There’s two thing to compare the sum-or-the-parts against: the whole, and the goal. The difference … Continue reading Get Good, Stay Good, Get Better, Become Great
Update Your (Mental) Hardware
Here’s a funny insight in to the way our brains our hardwired: if we don’t know what something is, we automatically substitute something else for it in our minds. We, as humans, have an innate need for things to make some amount of sense. Because we’re lazy too – we want it fast, and with … Continue reading Update Your (Mental) Hardware
“Gucci Gang,” Economic Scarcity, and Upward Mobility
Once we start looking for it, we can find examples of speed, velocity, and pace everywhere. Let’s take rapper Lil Pump’s hit, “Gucci Gang” and break it down as an example.* The track opens with 2 layered sounds at two different paces. There is an airy synthesizer playing chords (several notes at once) that changes … Continue reading “Gucci Gang,” Economic Scarcity, and Upward Mobility